TUESDAY, NOV. 13, 2018

It’s Santa Clara’s answer to comments Gonzaga’s longtime basketball coach made to Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney at last month’s West Coast Conference media day at Orleans Arena – a continuation of a Few theme that’s been logged in the Spokesman for, well, years.

THURSDAY, NOV. 1, 2018

When we last left the Gonzaga Bulldogs in competitive mode, Killian Tillie was hunched in a sideline chair in the Staples Center, jacket collar pulled up under his lower lip. His mien suggested he’d just been served one of those employee special pizzas now famous at Comerica Park.

The prize recruit in the West Coast Conference last spring wasn't a 7-foot center with forward skills, a jumping-jack slasher with a touch from 3 or a consummate playmaker at the point. The league kept Gonzaga. That was the catch of the year.

SATURDAY, OCT. 27, 2018

There were a lot of 6-6s projected, or maybe five wins and you could even find a 3-9 prediction or two out there, though that seemed the fuzziest of math when you looked at Wazzu’s nonconference schedule. In any event, the best the Cougs were supposed to aspire to was a leaky raft and a roll of duct tape, and maybe a reward in one of those post-season games that sheds one sponsor’s name for another every year. And now look

MONDAY, OCT. 15, 2018

Whatever the Washington State Cougars achieve this football season and beyond, they’ll do it without the comforting narration – or even just the avuncular asides – of Bob Robertson, who went into victory formation on Monday after 52 years as their beloved voice.

SATURDAY, OCT. 6, 2018

Any number of things are contrary to official Pac-12 policy, including football games that get you back home before midnight. Another one: Washington State and Oregon State being good in the same season.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 3, 2018

John Blanchette: Whatever grand aspirations get attached to the authoring of history books, they all start with the same premise. Correcting memories that are faulty, or worse. Too much history, we know, is like a party round of the Telephone Game after uncorking the fifth bottle of wine. The original story almost never makes it to its destination.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 29, 2018

For nearly the entire second half Saturday, the wait was on for The Drive That Would Define the Season. But it turns out we were looking for Wazzu’s telltale heart in the wrong place. Because it was there all along. It was just the defense doing the defining.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 15, 2018

So the Washington State Cougars have navigated their minefield of a non-conference schedule – they just took down the heavyweight of the first three weeks, Eastern Washington, in a fun 59-24 shootout-turned-beatdown Saturday to run their record to 3-0.

Two things about football: One, any time someone suggests the game is at a crisis point or some moral crossroads, you can be sure a few rich guys will ready to gamble some spare change and create yet another professional league – or two – because they know America’s football thirst cannot be slaked.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 1, 2018

What restored the psychic equilibrium, oddly enough, was something the Cougars had that maybe no one was quite ready to accept: an assured, tested, steady hand at quarterback, who looked as if he had years of flight hours in Leach’s cockpit.